In its early days, the Internet was used to transport fairly homogeneous and relatively light textual content between computers. Since then, the Internet has become an extremely diverse platform which is used to transfer a myriad of different types of content in a variety of formats. Today, bandwidth intensive content, such as media files, for example, traverses the Internet alongside relatively light content, such as text and simple graphics.
Peer to peer (P2P) technology is a major contributor to the dramatic rise in the amount of bandwidth intensive content being exchanged over the Internet. P2P services, such as KazaaA™, eDonkey™/eMule™, Gnutella™ and BitTorrent™ are believed to be responsible for approximately 60% (percent) of all Internet traffic.
Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as an example of organizations which maintain a group of computers or nodes that form a specified portion of a network, typically pay for external links (links with nodes located outside the specified portion of the network). Thus, P2P traffic, being associated with content intensive traffic, is a significant contributor to the operating costs of ISPs and has become a heavy financial burden on the shoulders of the ISPs.
If ISPs were provided with effective means for reducing the operating expenses associated with P2P traffic, their profitability would increase. Such solutions need to maintain a relatively high quality of service level due to the popularity and demand of P2P services. Therefore simply blocking P2P traffic is not feasible.
In an attempt to provide effective means for reducing the operating expenses associated with certain types of traffic, such as P2P traffic, several solutions have been suggested. However, prior art solutions expose the ISP to the content of the communication and in particular to the content of P2P communications, and some solutions even involve storing (caching) data which is associated with (or refers to) the content of the P2P communications. Exposure to the content of the P2P communications may impose considerable liabilities on the ISP, for example, in lieu copyright infringement.